Post Pandemic Tacos and Ponies

This last weekend I got on a plane for the first time since January 2020! It was definitely a weird experience, but I was only on the plane for an hour because I went to visit L in San Diego! I hadn’t been down to see her since her wedding TWO YEARS AGO, it felt like way too long. 

My welcoming crew at the barn

I flew down Friday at 2:30 and she came to pick me up around 4. One of my favorite things about visiting horse friends is that they frequently pick me up from the airport and take me straight to the barn, and that’s what we did! We went to go see Dante and turn him out to roll. I hadn’t seen L’s new barn yet (and it’s not even that new at this point lol) so I got a quick tour of both the barn she’s currently at and the one next door that she used to be at. It’s such a nice barn! The arenas had good footing and the turnouts were super fancy (and TC proof, there was hot wire between the boards lol I will forever be obsessed with checking if fencing is TC proof). 

After playing with Dante and me making him smile until he was annoyed with me, we headed home to go get tacos. When I told L what I wanted to do this weekend, it was very simple: horses and tacos. I haven’t had really good tacos in a very long time, we have one or two restaurants up here that come close to the quality of tacos you can get in San Diego, but honestly nothing compares. We walked down with T and each got a taco and shared nachos. 

I already miss the food SO much

That evening L had a grad school zoom which T and I both attended, it was super fun but I got distracted by an equine physical therapy book that L showed me. I immediately ordered it because it went into specific detail on the muscles of the horse and what the development of each muscle can tell you about how your horse works. For example, the longitimus dorsi is the back muscle most commonly affected by saddle fit and the thoracic sling is what dictates whether the horse has a dip in front of the withers, not the cervical trapezius as I thought before. I definitely want to read this book when it comes to me and I’ll share what I find out. 

We definitely stayed up too late because we got to talking about a video game I couldn’t beat that I happened to have there with me and T offered to beat it for me (there’s way more to do after you beat it but I stopped playing it last year because my SO told me that he didn’t want to beat it for me and I think he thought that’d just motivate me to try harder and it did not). We did finally go to sleep though!

My horse was smaller than Dante, which I
appreciated lol

The next morning, we walked to get breakfast at a really delicious breakfast place. I don’t know why but I was super hungry on this trip, probably just being at a place with amazing food and finally getting to visit friends? I dunno, but I devoured my breakfast. 

After that, L and I were off to the barn again to take a lesson! Both of us actually! I had asked L if her trainer had lesson horses and if I could take a lesson and she said yes and signed us up for a semi private lesson. Because Dante is doing smaller confidence building work, he is jumping the same height I’ve been jumping on Flounder so it worked out perfectly. I’ll talk more specifically about the lesson tomorrow but it was AMAZING, I learned a ton and had so much fun. 

We stopped by the grocery store to pick up some supplies for the evening because we had a fire in the backyard with some friends, one of them being Carrie! We laughed that I’d escaped the falling ash in the bay to then just inhale a bunch of smoke from the fire when it’d blow at me, but it was worth it. We ordered pizza and ate chips and guacamole. L had picked up a pie from the store, which was so good I honestly looked into having one delivered to my house this week (and even texted the SO “I’m considering ordering us a pie” and he wrote back “wat?”) but the shipping was as much as the pie itself. Oh well. Carrie also made a chocolate mochi cake with peanut butter frosting which was AMAZING and has inspired me to eat more mochi in general. 

Thule dog is the most adorable

The next morning, we had pie for breakfast and then headed out to the barn! L had asked me to bring all my fun rider aids and I did! I brought my Equicube, my rider bands, and the Mary Wanless rider belt. 

You may wonder, did I get stopped by TSA for any of this stuff and the answer is yes I did. The Equicube must have looked like something I could smuggle stuff in because the poor TSA man pulled it out and looked at it with the most hilariously confused facial expression. He looked back at me, back at the cube, turned to see if any other agents might be able to explain this to him, then he took out a wand thing to rub all over it, shrugged to himself, and put it back. I figured it was better to just stay quiet than to go into grave detail about what the cube was and how it worked. 

We took Dante out and L warmed him up and then I gave her the rider aids one by one. I ended up leaving the Equicube with L because it was so helpful to her and we conspired to see if she could have her trainer use it in lessons and maybe buy one for the barn so she could use it. Fingers crossed!

I then got a turn on Dante and WOW he is so grown up now! I haven't ridden him since like... 2017? 2018? Because I saw L twice in 2019, once for her horsey bachelorette party when I had mono (so couldn't ride) and once for her wedding (we were too busy to ride). L has done such a fabulous job with him, he felt really good. 

Dante, you better like jumping or I'll
make you into a dressage horse
muahahaha

After riding, we came back home and then too soon, we were heading out to drop me off at the airport to fly home. The SO came to get me and I pretty much immediately went to bed and slept ten hours lol!

I forgot how much I adore visiting my friends. Things have obviously been tough with TC’s continued muscle issues this year and it was so nice to both get away from the stress of that and to have L to talk to about it. She gave me a lot of really good ideas and I walked away feeling a bit more hopeful.

I had a super ride on him yesterday and I have a lesson with local trainer today, then tomorrow he gets his teeth done.